CYCLES

It’s be­com­ing in­creas­ingly hard to sec­ond-guess the near fu­ture of Cat­alo­nia (this au­tumn promises to be es­pe­cially tur­bu­lent, what with a mas­sive demon­stra­tion on Sep­tem­ber 11th to call for the es­tab­lish­ment of an in­de­pen­dent re­pub­lic plus the first an­niver­sary of last year’s ref­er­en­dum on Oc­to­ber 1st; as well as, prob­a­bly, the tri­als - or ’tri­als’ - of the lu­di­crously im­pris­oned Cata­lan civic and po­lit­i­cal lead­ers). Which is why in this month’s col­umn, pol­i­tics - being so un­pre­dictably mer­cu­r­ial - will be avoided in order to deal with a fre­quently over­looked prac­ti­cal prob­lem: bi­cy­cles. Namely, the ones which have made strolling through Barcelona a medium-to-high risk sport (the city’s Om­budswoman re­ported in 2016 that 10% of an­nual ac­ci­dents, in­clud­ing fatal ones, in­volved bi­cy­cles, sev­eral of them re­sult­ing in the death or se­ri­ous in­jury of pedes­tri­ans). It should be said that in the main, this is not the fault of the cy­clists them­selves. No, what has made bi­cy­cles the scourge of the Cata­lan cap­i­tal is the sheer daft­ness of the lay­out of what are op­ti­misti­cally called the city’s bi­cy­cle lanes. Im­pro­vised under the aegis of five dif­fer­ent May­ors since the early 90s, this lay­out con­sists mainly of often faded white lines painted on the pave­ment which not only end un­ex­pect­edly half-way along their ap­par­ent route but often pass within a haz­ardous hair’s breadth of metro exits. (The num­ber of more re­cent bi­cy­cle lanes which are clearly des­ig­nated and are not on the pave­ment can be counted on the fin­gers of one sorry hand). To make mat­ters worse, the Ajun­ta­ment is loathe to high­light or even men­tion the prob­lem (its web­site an­nu­ally lists every type of road ac­ci­dent ex­cept those caused by cy­clists to pedes­tri­ans) pos­si­bly be­cause to do so might clash with the im­pec­ca­bly eco­log­i­cal image it has been cul­ti­vat­ing for so many years. What to do? Well, maybe take a leaf out of the book of two of Eu­rope’s most bi­cy­cle-friendly cities. Copen­hagen, for ex­am­ple: it’s like Barcelona in that its net­work of lanes is far from com­plete, but be­cause the ex­ist­ing lanes are not on the pave­ment and be­cause bi­cy­cles are not al­lowed on the pave­ment, cy­clists have to con­tinue their jour­ney on tar­mac if no lanes are avail­able, leav­ing the city’s pedes­tri­ans to wend their way to wher­ever it is they wish to wend it with­out hav­ing to worry about being winged by a han­dle­bar or worse. In Am­s­ter­dam, on top of the ex­cel­lent net­work of bi­cy­cle lanes that has been in place for years, the city’s by-laws state that any in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a bi­cy­cle and a pedes­trian is au­to­mat­i­cally the fault of the cy­clist (by the by, any ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing a motor ve­hi­cle and a cy­clist is au­to­mat­i­cally the fault of the dri­ver). This ir­ri­tates the hell out of cy­clists but it means that at least – mov­ing as they do far faster than those of us who merely walk – they make damn sure they keep their eyes open. It is pre­cisely in Am­s­ter­dam, how­ever, that a new prob­lem is aris­ing which will surely be com­ing to Barcelona soon: e-bikes – being tech­ni­cally clas­si­fied as bi­cy­cles - are al­lowed on Am­s­ter­dam’s cycle lanes, de­spite the fact that their mo­tors make them much faster than any push­bike (high-end e-bikes can reach speeds of up to 80 kph). In­du­bitably eco­log­i­cal though they are, their silent swift­ness is al­ready mak­ing them a men­ace to life and limb in the Dutch cap­i­tal. So it’ll be in­ter­est­ing to see what Barcelona’s Ajun­ta­ment does with them once they ap­pear on the ma­jor­ity of the city’s bi­cy­cle lanes which are on the pave­ment.